PITTSFIELD, Mass. – As many Americans get ready to celebrate the nation’s 250th “birthday,” Juneteenth stands as a reminder of the original sin that characterized the country’s first century and the painful legacy that persists well into its third.

 

The Berkshire County Branch of the NAACP put that message front and center at Sunday’s Juneteenth celebration at Durant Park, providing attendees with an inter-generational community reading of Frederick Douglass’ landmark speech, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?”

 

In it, Douglass, who escaped slavery at age 20 and went on to be one of the great orators of his day, offers a no holds barred critique of the antebellum United States, exposing the hypocrisy of a nation that celebrated its freedom from England while enslaving more than 3 million of its own people.

 

A member of the NAACP Berkshire County Branch Executive Committee said that Douglass’ message, first delivered in Rochester, N.Y., on July 5, 1850, is still pertinent today.

 

“Even after the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment, Black people had to fight for freedom, the right to vote, the right to be citizens, right to own property, everything, and so we are facing those challenges still today,” said Frances Jones-Sneed, PhD., an emeritus professor of history at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts.

 

“I think his words back at that point in time are still relevant today, and that’s the reason why all over the country, people are reading that speech.”

 

On Sunday afternoon, Jones-Sneed took the first turn at the microphone, reading from the opening passages of Douglass’ speech, when he laid the groundwork by reminding his audience of the true revolutionary spirit of 1776.

 

“Your fathers were wise men, and if they did not go mad, they became restive under [England’s] treatment,” Douglass said. “They felt themselves the victims of grievous wrongs, wholly incurable in their colonial capacity. With brave men there is always a remedy for oppression. Just here, the idea of a total separation of the colonies from the crown was born.”

 

Dr. Will Singleton, Khloe Amankwah, Aastha Rai, Mirabai Dyson, A.J. Enchill, Alisa Costa, Demetrious Bizas, Jim Mancall, Koby Cross, Toni Buckley, Latifah Phillips, Mackenzie Colvin, MyNisia Charles, Heather McNiece, and Madeline Fralia followed, presenting Douglass’ thoughts as he walked his 19th Century audience through the reasons why the deeply entrenched slave industry was anathema to the Spirit of ‘76.

 

“What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim,” To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy— a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.”

 

Douglass delivered his speech for the first time 11 years before the start of the American Civil War and 14 years before that war ended and slavery was, officially, ended. Juneteenth marks the day – more than two months after the end of hostilities between the United States and the Army of Northern Virginia – that news of the war’s end and emancipation reached enslaved people in Galveston, Texas.

 

The NAACP Berkshire County Branch celebrated Juneteenth with music, a non-profit fair, basketball games, the awarding of scholarships to young residents and a cultural hair show.

 

Among the musical acts to take the stage were soul, rock and jazz band Sample the Cat, jazz singer Wanda Houston and the Berkshire Sole Society.

 

The festivities continued well into the afternoon, but the 12:30 community reading of Douglass’ words echoed throughout.

 

“How can Black people celebrate the Fourth of July when they haven’t gotten full citizenship, full freedom, the full right to vote and all those things that are kind of being pulled back?” Jones-Sneed asked.

 

“Usually, when you talk about the Centennial or the Bicentennial or the celebration of freedom in this country, the Declaration of Independence, it seems like Black people are always left out of that process, so Douglass was trying to say, ‘Hey, we’re here.’

 

“That’s what we’re still saying today.”

 

Photos from this event to come.